


Invictus

by rxcrcfllptrs



Category: Team Crafted
Genre: Gen, superpower au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxcrcfllptrs/pseuds/rxcrcfllptrs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Out of the night that covers me,<br/>Black as the Pit from pole to pole,<br/>I thank whatever gods may be<br/>For my unconquerable soul."</p>
<p>- Invictus, William Ernest Henley</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invictus

**Author's Note:**

> #20: Liar. Chapter title from "Apres Moi" by Regina Spektor.

 0321, a time of very early morning or too late a night where it’s the half-time of a graveyard shift, the time for lovers cuddling in front of a flame in the coldness of winter, or a time where people find themselves questioning their choices in life. In such secluded areas such as laboratories shielded by the government’s knowledge (or “lack” thereof) of it, people find themselves in the third criteria.

Thomas Yang, T.Y.-116702, is a scientist that has thought about it so much that it’s become a daily part of his routine. It happens along the times where he’s culturing more donated sex cells and examining those that have been fertilised in the laboratory. He finds his regrets in the scratches of his glasses, the times it’s dropped on the wooden walls of his empty one bedroom apartment or the accidental jerks of his hand as he handles a sharp syringe. It comes to a point where he can’t tell which ones are older than the memories erased and re-bonded into his subconscious, and which are freshly made, but he’s too absent-minded to mind.

“You alright over there?” Sally Hemingway, S.H.-129823, pats him on the shoulder with her elbow, gloved hands carefully handling two petri dishes of precious samples. “You look like you’re about to nod off,” she notes with a concerned look in her eye. “Take a breather for a moment?”

He shakes his head, waving the thought away with his hand. “Nah, I’ve just been thinking.” (though, he really has been losing sleep the past few days.) “Little bit too much, I admit,” he amends when he sees her raised eyebrow. “But I’m totally awake. Alive, alert, awake, and enthusiastic!” he says in a mock-serious tone before he turns back to the microscope. _When will these dratted things actually fertilise? Damn PIA-001 and PIA-005 for not being very fertile!_

“If you say so,” she shrugs, the clang of glass hitting steel a sign that she’s put her samples down. “This project’s quite a doozy, eh? Just us geneticists looking in as we attempt to help a couple get a baby,” she says, stretching the conversation so the silence doesn’t get to her.

Thomas shrugs. “God knows what we’re actually working on. We could be hybridising a dog and a cat, or some sort of alien they have hidden in the underworks of this place,” he tsks when another sample doesn’t pass, and replaces the dish with another. “Not that we’d remember it, anyway,” he murmurs, hoping that it doesn’t get picked up by the cameras.

“What do you mean by that?” she asks, turning the objectives on the device. “Of course we’d remember!”

He sighs. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” she says with a  slightly more chipper tone. “First in my batch to actually get a job, and a good one at that! Not some cruddy paper-pusher in some capitalist pharmaceutical company.”

He hums, moving the dish around before seeing it - fertilisation!

“ _EUREKA!_ ” he very nearly shrieks, jumping out of his chair. He must’ve looked ridiculous at that moment, heavy-lidded eyes and hair sticking up in odd directions, arms flailing like a madman. But that doesn’t matter at all, he’s done his job!

“You realised something new?” she turns to his direction on her swivel chair. He looks at her with slightly crazed eyes - maybe he did really need to get sleep.

“Well,” he drops his arms. “No, not really. I just wanted to say it, but I didn’t have a bath tub or enough water to do it,” he shrugs. “But- whatever- nevermind that!” he chatters away when he returns to looking at the specimen.

“I might have accomplished what our job is for today,” he murmurs, looking as what looks to be meiosis, first stage in fact. “Wow, the miracle of human life happening before my-...” he trails off, seeing something that might not be normal in most In vitro fertilisation methods.

A- a spark? There was some sort of commotion happening in the gametes, as if they were at war. He could swear he could see steam rising from it… _What the hell?_ He looks up and rummages around for the files of the donors, the mysterious PIA-001 and PIA-005. A quick scan of the files make him more confused, but he can’t let them know that. “Oh.”

“What oh?” Sally asks, standing up and walking over to his station. “Is there something wrong with the process? We’d have to start over, you know that, right?”

Thomas looks into empty space, dazed. “No, no, I’m sure of it- this is a successful fertilisation, and we need to get it to the surrogate - mother, whatever! - as quickly as possible!” he spares it one more glance, the strange activity still happening. He quickly swipes it so the younger scientist doesn’t see.

“Alright, then,” she says, a little defeated in her tone - _I was just trying to help!_ Thomas has no time for that now, however, as he looks for something that can act as a cover so he can deliver it to the higher-ups safely.

* * *

 

“Are you sure the process was successful?” a large, burly man that could probably snap Thomas in half asks, keeping the dish still in his palm. “This isn’t the first time scientists have told us that they were successful, and you don’t want to know what happened to them,” the scientist nervously yet discreetly looks around him for any possible sources of threat. “Was it a… normal fertilisation? No mishaps, no accidental addition of anything?”

“N-n-no sir!” he resists the urge to salute. “It was all fine and dandy, a refreshing ch-change from the hundreds of other s-s-samples that refused to do the same thing!” _Lie, fake it ‘til you make it. You can get through this._

The man looks him dead in the eye for a moment. “Alright. But it’ll be on your head if we don’t have results at the end of the term,” he motions to the petri dish before turning and exiting into a service elevator - going up, it seems.

When the glass doors have closed and the elevator has started its ascent, T.H.-116702 leans on the tube elevator’s metal wall and breathes a sigh of relief. _You made it._

A voice in the back of his head, a tinny and small one, shouts back. _Liar!_

 

 


End file.
